


You found me

by pxnky



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: A little blood for a few seconds, Developing Relationship, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Black Eagles Route, Fluff, Happy Ending, Light Angst, M/M, Marriage Proposal, Okay maybe heavy, They're just happy and in love okay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-03
Updated: 2020-05-03
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:41:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23987560
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pxnky/pseuds/pxnky
Summary: Maybe it's because Byleth is the professor and Linhardt has always been the student, even when they're no longer at the Officers Academy, but Byleth always manages to find Linhardt. He always does. Always.
Relationships: Blink and you'll miss it Ashe Ubert/Caspar von Bergliez, Linhardt von Hevring/My Unit | Byleth
Kudos: 37





	You found me

**Author's Note:**

> Aka I've spent +300 hours playing FE3H and marrying Linhardt as M!Byleth was the best choice I've made

Byleth has only been working at the monastery for two months and Linhardt is not sure how many of his classes he’s already skipped. In fact, he believes it would be easier to count how many classes he’s attended. It’s nothing intentional, or at least that’s what he thinks, it’s just that his bed is his prison and Linhardt is a recluse with no intention of leaving his comfortable cell. Not as long as the alternative is a class full of people who don’t know the word ‘silence’ and its meaning.

Linhardt is not stupid even if some of his classmates insist that that’s the truth. It’s Sunday, almost midday, and Linhardt is thinking about spending the rest of the day at the library, all his attention focused on some book about crests or a fishing guide that offers him some new technique to catch the biggest ones (even if he believes that’s rather impossible).

Well, he **was** thinking about that, at least.

Linhardt is not stupid and he knows who those footsteps belong to. He’s heard them enough times on those days where the stars align and he goes to class. The footsteps stop in front of his room’s door. Linhardt can almost understand how Bernadetta must feel, even if the situation is more different than it is similar. Linhardt is not afraid of Byleth, not in the slightest, he’s simply fed up with his professor’s lectures and would rather not hear them again. Not now, not tomorrow, not ever if he can help it. He thinks that maybe, if he stays still and very quiet, Byleth won’t even bother knocking on his door and would leave him alone, then Linhardt could finally be able to go to the library, his second home. It’s childish and he’s well aware of that, but if that’s what he has to do to spend a quiet Sunday in with no lectures, even if he wouldn’t do that under normal circumstances, so be it.

To no one’s surprise, his childish tactic doesn’t work.

Byleth skips the knocking part and he directly goes to opening the door. They’re face to face now. Linhardt feels like a little kid who’s been found by his friends while playing hide and seek. And maybe that would be the case if only they weren’t students of the Officers’ Academy, if they weren’t learning how to use magic and handle dangerous weapons, if they didn’t have in their hands the blood of those bandits they had to kill during their first official mission.

“Found you” And Linhardt knows there’s no escaping this lecture.

It’s been eight months since Byleth got to the Monastery. The Ball and the White Heron Cup are approaching, slowly but surely. It’s not something that particularly interests him, if Linhardt has to be honest. He can dance in theory, so at the very least he should be able to not make a fool out of himself and step on his partners’ feet in case a random student offers him to dance.

He’s at the library, immersed in a book like usual on Sundays, when Caspar doesn’t drag him to the dinning hall to eat and talk his ear off with his (very exaggerated) stories. Linhardt is sure that he’s already read that particular volume more than once, but he believes that rereading can be useful and can help him catch details that he overlooked during his first reading, so it doesn’t really matter.

The silence of the library is soon broken when someone enters and the wooden floorboards creak in a not at all pleasant way. Linhardt doesn’t need to take his eyes off his book to know who is it, because the sound of those footsteps it’s enough.

Byleth is talking to someone. Out of the corner of his eye, Linhardt sees him giving the boy with glasses from the Golden Deer House something that looks like a small blue stone. The boy immediately accepts the item and thanks Byleth for giving that thing, whatever it is, back, adding that he had been looking for it everywhere.

It’s then when a fleeting doubt, that goes away as soon as it comes to his mind, attacks him. For just a second that feels more like a year, Linhardt focuses his gaze on Byleth and wonders how it would feel like to dance with him. Not with anyone else. Just with him and no one else. Without strangers, without the other students that he hasn’t talked to in his life, without the rest of the Black Eagles House even, just the two of them. He wonders if Byleth would be as clumsy and inexperienced as he is, and Linhardt finds himself smiling at the simple thought of his always calm and inexpressive professor losing his cool, being careful as to not step on his feet, a hand resting on Linhardt’s hip and the other holding his hand, their fingers intertwined. They’d end up laughing at how clumsy the other is and doing everything except dancing, that much is for sure.

He doesn’t have much time left to think about anything else. He doesn’t even have time to take his eyes off of Byleth and focus on his book again.

“Found you” And Byleth gives him back that book, The Saints Revealed, that Linhardt had lost a few weeks ago.

It’s been… Nine? Maybe ten months? He’s not sure. It’s not like he’s seen Byleth around much lately, excluding classes, of course. Linhardt understands, it hasn’t been that long since his father passed away after all, and his ‘changes’ (and by that he means his new eye and hair color) haven’t made things better in the slightest.

Much to his surprise, Byleth invites him to have lunch at the dinning hall. Sure, he also invites Caspar, but Linhardt pays it no mind. Byleth invited him, it’s the first time since his father’s death that he’s invited anyone to eat (or that he does something else on Sundays rather than just stay in his room or walk around the monastery on his own, without talking to anyone) and he’s picked _him_. It’s probably really stupid, but Linhardt looks at Byleth, then down at his plate and back to his professor again; he smiles and lets him know how happy he is that Byleth went out of his way to invite him to eat his favorite food.

Byleth’s new hair is green. Not a dark, intense green like his own hair, but a lighter one, like mint. It’s shiny and looks soft and pleasant to the touch. Linhardt once read, out of pure boredom, a book about the meaning of colors; green was defined as the color of life, of renewal, of nature and energy. Linhardt doesn’t have to think much to know that Byleth is all that, and maybe even more. He’s also safety, harmony, growth.

The color suits him so well in every sense that it’s almost scary.

He realizes something feels different from usual when he has to hold back his almost unstoppable urge to reach out his hand and pet Byleth’s hair. At least Caspar and his war cries (and his bad table manners) work incredibly well to take Linhardt back to reality.

“Found you” Byleth must think that Linhardt is too busy eating to hear what he’s saying, but the truth is different. Linhardt hears him; he hears him and the feeling that something has changed grows even bigger.

It’s been five years. Five years that Byleth has spent sleeping, drifting away in a river. His clothes aren’t even completely dry yet, and Edelgard still has a lot of things to tell him which are, for sure, more important than what he’s doing right now. But instead of listening to what Edelgard has to say, to hear what had happened with Rhea and the Church since Byleth and the rest of the Black Eagles opposed them five years ago, Byleth roams around the Monastery. No, he’s not simply roaming it for pure leisure. He knows what he wants, he knows who he’s looking for.

He’s looking for Linhardt.

He starts to worry when he doesn’t find Linhardt in his room, or in the library, or in the dinning hall or the fishing pond. He even asks Caspar where he could be, but the boy shrugs and tells him he has no idea. Byleth is not disappointed in the slightest, in fact he kind of saw it coming.

He doesn’t have high expectations, but he does have something similar to hope when he passes the greenhouse. He sees Linhardt there, looking at the violets and the pitcher plants, and the tranquility he radiates makes it look like they’re back to the Academy days and not in the middle of a war. Maybe he’s working on some important experiment, but Byleth lets go of his constant calm for a second and gets close to him. Linhardt has his back turned on him, and Byleth stays still, waiting for him to notice his presence.

Byleth can’t see it because Linhardt has his back to him, but the mage forgets what he was doing as soon as he hears those familiar footsteps again. He forgets about the pitcher plants, the violets, his research, everything. He forgets and smiles because he’d recognize those footsteps anywhere, no matter how many years pass, five or ten. Even so, he takes his time, gets up as if his body doesn’t feel one hundred times lighter, as if he isn’t relieved that Byleth is still alive; he turns so they’re face to face for the first time in five years.

_I found him_ , is what Byleth thinks before wrapping his arms around Linhardt. And even if he doesn’t say anything, Byleth knows what it means when Linhardt grips his cape tightly, his fingers digging on Byleth’s shoulder blades.

_I thought you were dead, please don’t leave ever again._ Or something along those lines.

Time keeps passing, but Linhardt has stopped counting the months because it’s not something he can afford to do in the middle of a war. And also because he’s too busy, not with his research this time, but with putting in order and coming to terms with his recently discovered feelings for Byleth. He’s not that obtuse, of course he didn’t need those five years to realize that he feels something for his (former) professor of the Academy. In fact, he started to notice it a little while after the Ball, at some point between their encounter in the Goddess Tower and Byleth appearing in front of them in the Sealed Forest with a completely different hair and eye color. It’s just that he had been five years without seeing Byleth and he hadn’t had to think about how to act in consequence. Not until now at least. And now that Byleth is back, he’s had to face those feelings (the ones he didn’t ask for to begin with) again, feeling them getting all tangled inside his chest.

Byleth is anything but an idiot, Linhardt knows that he must have noticed how he’s been avoiding his professor all day. Getting out of the library when Byleth entered to read a book, abandoning Caspar in the dinning hall with zero remorse, leaving his friend talking to himself as soon as Byleth showed up, rejecting all his invitations to tea parties, even asking Dorothea to make excuses for him and tell Byleth that he’s sleeping in case the professor decided to ask her.

It’s thanks to Dorothea that Linhardt knows Byleth has been looking for him all day, askingeveryone at the monastery if they had seen him. Rejecting a petition from Hubert because ‘he had something important to do’. For the second time in his life (and, once again, thanks to his professor) Linhardt understands how Bernadetta must feel, and even asks himself if he should ask her for advice on how to avoid people. Sure, he soon dismisses that thought because he knows it’s irrational, and there’s only one person he would want to avoid anyway.

Besides, Linhardt is decent and knows how to hide when he tries.

The sun is about to set. Linhardt had came there with the idea of napping in mind, but ended up asking himself why he had never thought about coming up to the third floor to see the sunset before. Well, he does know the reason; those are Lady Rhea’s quarters (rather, they were) and it wasn’t until now that she’s no longer there that it has become a place for everyone to enjoy.

Sadly, ‘everyone’ includes Byleth, too. Linhardt should’ve seen that coming, but his excuse is that his brain is too exhausted due to lack of sleep and the constant running away, so he really can’t think clearly.

He hears footsteps coming up behind him, stopping halfway, probably waiting for Linhardt to notice and turn around on his own. That oppression inside his chest and the feeling of his stomach churning can be easily identified as ‘nervousness’. It’s almost comical, because Linhardt has never felt that way before, but Byleth seems to have a gift when it comes to getting under Linhardt’s skin.

Not like Linhardt cares.

As much as Linhardt tries to remain serene, he knows that Byleth can see further. As if, with just looking at Linhardt in the eye for a second, he could know exactly what’s happening. And what he sees when he looks at Linhardt is that he’s conflicted; because he knows what he feels, but they’re in the middle of a war and it’s simply **not** the time. Frustration gets mixed with resignation and the fear of dying in the next battle, then with Byleth’s embrace that makes him feel joyful and safe.

“There you are” Byleth speaks and Linhardt doesn’t say anything, he simply hides his face in the crook of Byleth’s neck and breathes in. His professor smells like metal, dust and exotic spices, as if he’s been cooking not too long ago.

Linhardt knows that this won’t last forever. That one of them can die, or that Byleth can have someone else in mind to share his life with. But even if that’s the case, Linhardt has finished arranging his thoughts and he already knows what he is going to do if war doesn’t also claim his life.

Blood. All he sees is red. His hands, his clothes, everything is covered in blood. It’s not his, it’s not Byleth’s either; it’s Caspar’s.

The wound on his side is pretty deep, blood doesn’t stop coming. Ferdinand and Dorothea help take him to the infirmary, Manuela is visibly disturbed, shouting orders left and right, calling for the other healers, including Mercedes, to help her. On the other hand, she doesn’t allow Linhardt to stay because she knows how lightheaded he must be, how panicked. He’s seen a lot of people dying, but he’s not ready to see his best friend go. He can’t deny it, he’s scared, he’s not in his right mind and he might commit a negligence; Linhardt understands her reasoning, he can’t blame her. But he doesn’t go too far, he refuses to do so. He stays in front of the closed door of the infirmary and Ashe does his best to comfort him. Linhardt is grateful for the gesture, and even though he’s aware that the archer must be just as affected as he is by the incident (after all, Ashe and Caspar have become strangely close this couple of months ago, and whatever their relationship is, Linhardt is more than willing to give them his blessing).

Then the familiar footsteps come, and with them, Byleth. Ashe goes away, prefers to leave them alone and help carry the rest of the injured soldiers to the infirmary.

Linhardt allows himself to waver in Byleth’s presence, leave his guard down, and finally, break down. He’s annoyed, he’s dizzy, he’s sad, he’s hurt, but most of all he’s scared. He knows this is all Caspar’s fault for not being able to shut up, keep calm and avoid his war cries, but at the same time Linhardt wonders if he could’ve done something to help his friend. Maybe if he had done something, Caspar wouldn’t be at the verge of death right now. He trusts Manuela, Mercedes and the rest, but he can’t stop thinking about the extremely low possibilities of this not going well.

Linhardt hates himself. He hates himself for being so pathetic and selfish, and wonders if Edelgard and Hubert had been right five years ago when they told him that he was too lazy for his own good. Linhard has never showed anyone that side of him, at least not publicly; he’s never let anyone except for himself know that, in fact, he’s not just the sassy guy fond on napping and only interested in things such as fishing, crests and nothing else. That he has feelings like everyone else and that he’s indeed bothered by everyone only seeing him as lazy, useless, selfish, someone who’s not able to make an effort for someone else.

In the solitude of his room he would’ve told himself that he’s none of that, but Linhardt has a limit and it’s been crossed a while ago. So he just lets himself go and cries. Bylet’s warm embrace makes for a nice shelter, his shoulder for a nice support while Byleth’s fingers run through his hair and offer him some comfort. Linhardt cries, cries all those tears he won’t cry for his dad if he ever turns out dead during the war. He keeps crying and cries a little more.

And even though Byleth is not the best with facial expressions, seeing Linhardt of all people like that is unsettling. Byleth hugs him tighter, presses their bodies together a little more, keeps petting his hair and offers him words of comfort.

“It’s alright. Just wait a little longer” Linhardt lifts his face and Byleth sees him: eyes red, tears running freely through his cheeks, uneven breathing and a bereaved gaze. “He’s going to be alright. We’re going to be alright”

Linhardt clings to Byleth a little tighter and keeps crying in the crook of his neck.

He believes him. Linhardt believes him and wants to cling onto the idea that, soon enough, Caspar will be runing around the monastery again, asking the guards to fight him day after day. He even dares go a little further and think that, maybe, the war isn’t that far away from coming to an end, that there will soon be peace again and he will be able to confess his feelings to Byleth, even if it’s just to get that weight off his shoulders. That he will soon forget the stress of the battlefield and all those sleepless nights, and will finally be able to move to the countryside with Byleth, fish together, sleep together.

**Be** together.

Assuming that Byleth does accept his proposal, of course.

Five years and a half. That’s how long the war takes to be over. Linhardt feels free; free of all the ties he once had, of the chains that tied him to the battlefield all that time. Now he has all the freedom in the world, there’s nothing holding him back from leaving, dedicating the rest of his life to his research, retiring to the countryside when he’s fed up with that business. But there’s something he wants to do before all that. Something he **needs** to do.

Dusk will be over soon, it won’t be long till dark. The Goddess Tower hasn’t changed in all these years, even though everything else, including them, has changed.

Byleth is there, his back turned on him, looking out of the window. This time, Linhardt is the one looking for him, stopping a few feet away from him and waiting for Byleth to turn around so they’re face to face and he can tell him everything he’s been bottling up all this time. Byleth welcomes him with a small, almost imperceptible smile. That smile is for Linhardt, no doubt about it. There’s no one else there with them, it can’t be for anyone else.

He doesn’t kneel in front of Byleth and his confession is nothing out of the ordinary, but his mind goes blank when Byleth accepts his ring and his smile grows even bigger. Linhardt feels like he can finally breathe, like that burden he’s been carrying for years has left his shoulders and all he can do is sigh in relief. Joy soon takes over him and Linhardt starts telling Byleth all about his life plans, what he’d like to do, but he really wouldn’t mind subjecting them to change if Byleth doesn’t agree with something. A relationship is a thing of two people after all, and reaching agreements with his professor has been something he’s done on the daily in his Academy days.

They’re going to be alright, Byleth told him so months ago and now it has finally become a reality.

Then, they hug. Linhardt is the one who initiates the hug this time, and Byleth the one who reciprocates. They’re alright, they’re happy, they’re together. That’s all that matters.

“You found me” Linhardt finds himself muttering those words in Byleth’s shoulder. He makes a confused sound from the bottom of his throat, and Linhardt laughs at how visibly perplexing he is. He understands. After all, this time Linhardt is the one who’s found Byleth and not the other way around, like it has always been. Doesn’t matter. “You did”

That’s how things are. How they’ve always been. Byleth has always found him, since their Academy days up until now. He’s brought him back to Earth when he needed it, he was there to instruct him, to guide him, even to comfort him in his moments of weakness. He’s found him so many time that it almost feels like they’ve been playing hide and seek or some other childish game since they first met. Linhardt is thankful, thankful for all that and even more, he’s thankful that Byleth showed up in his life.

Because, if Byleth had never found him, he wouldn’t be on cloud nine right now. He wouldn’t feel like he’s in paradise right there and then, between Byleth’s arms. He wouldn’t feel so ridiculously happy it’s almost laughable.

This is paradise. And they have made it so.


End file.
